Page 52 of If Looks Could Kill
No words can describe the terror that gripped me then. I could barely suck in a breath.
Another one. Pearl.
Sound exploded around me. The grunts and scrabbling steps of a sudden scuffle. Thumps and clatters as of deadweights dropping. The deafening report of a gunshot.
Pearl!
My captor, cursing in my ear. The heave of him tossing me aside like a sofa cushion, turning, and clattering down the stairs below. The impact as I struck a wall, leaving my head ringing. The sound of my own breath flooding into my throat, choking me, like one drowning. From the room ahead, where the commotion had been, a feral scream that froze my blood.
I groped my way feverishly through the darkness, colliding painfully with furnishings, racing toward that glimmer of light. Just as I reached it and flung the door open, a gaslight flared into existence. When my eyes and wits had settled, here is what I saw:
Three men lying sprawled upon the floor of this second room. A smoking pistol not far from one’s hand. A lead pipe near another. The third man, apparently the first to fall, as the others’ bodies lay partly across his trunk. And a long knife blade, its point plunged deep into the floorboards, wobbling upright with a thin stripe of blood curving across its side.
Curled in one corner, two girls huddled, their arms wrapped around each other. Both were dressed in sheer red satin slips and black lace dressing gowns. One’s face was smeared with kohl and rouge.
At last. Cora.
The other had a nasty black eye. She wouldn’t look at me. Without her spectacles, it took me a moment to realize who she was.
Freyda Gorbady. My God.
And in the corner, with red eyes burning and a hundred mouths hissing, was Pearl. Behind her, on the wall, a crumbling bullet hole in the plaster.
And in Pearl’s outstretched, shaking hands, the severed body of a thin golden snake.
Tabitha—At Mother Rosie’s(Sunday, December 2, 1888)
At the sight, at all the sights, my body went cold and disoriented. The room seemed to tilt. I feared I’d pass out.
But others were worse off than me. I swallowed my terror and reached out a hand.
“Freyda? Are you all right?” I pulled her to her feet.
“Tabitha?” she whispered. “Is thatPearl?”
We both looked at the Medusa with her back against the wall. Her breathing was ragged, and a strangled noise of rage and grief came from her throat. A sob and a growl.
I had to get her out of here. And not just her. Would she listen?
“Freyda,” I said, “what are you doing here?”
I shouldn’t have asked. Her bruised face, her provocative clothing, her tears. These men. This place. Mother Rosie’s crib. Freyda’s failure to return within a week as expected.
The other girl, still crouched on the floor, slid back away from Pearl.
“You came looking for Cora,” I whispered as realization dawned.
The girl in the corner looked up. “Came looking forwho?”
“Nothing,” Freyda said. She gave me a quelling look. Fine. No questions, for now.
Freyda took a deep breath. “I was looking for a story,” she said. Her eyes filled with tears. “I talked myself into—I can’t believe I was this stupid.”
I wrapped my arms around her. She could’ve been us. We could’ve been her. We were close to undertaking such a scheme ourselves. And here, in fact, we were.
Cora rose to her feet. “You’d better go.” To Freyda she asked, “Are you going too?”
“We’re all going,” I told the room. “You too. We’re all getting out of here.”
